


dad's night in

by cecilia095



Category: 24 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Babysitting, Cute Kids, Dad!Tony Just Does It For Me, F/M, Family Feels, Future Fic, Gen, Tony And Michelle Live CTU-Free Somewhere Where Car Bombs Don't Exist, that's a good one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24070129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: “Tony, you’ve never been alone with all three kids before.”AU.
Relationships: Tony Almeida/Michelle Dessler
Kudos: 20





	dad's night in

**Author's Note:**

> I love this 'verse, I love the Almeida kids (borrowed from [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2744570/ShirleyTemple24) and [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/3033102/ElizaMitchell) — their fics are the cutest!) and I'm also writing for a fandom of what, three? The '24' fandom may be dead, but clearly it's the only show inspiring me to actually create right now, so... I had to roll with it. Writing makes me so happy, and the one blessing in this weird-ass time is that I've written more now than I have in years. So even if just a few people see this, I'm fine with that. :)
> 
> Also, Dad!Tony is my favorite version of Tony. Just thinking about it... damn.

“...and Maddie needs her hair braided before bed. You _can_ do a braid, right?”

“Easy.”

“Fine. Also, Anthony has his soccer pictures tomorrow. You know where his uniform is?”

“In the basket next to the dryer, and his cleats are in the hallway closet. Next?”

“I pumped just before for Mason. Try to be patient with the bottle, he hasn’t had very many of them.”

“I’m a pro at weaning the kids off of your boobs, Michelle. I’ll be fine.”

Michelle scrunches her nose at that, a hand in her hair and a bobby pin pressed in between her lips. She was supposed to leave five, maybe ten minutes ago for a Bachelorette party, but no one expects three-kids-later Michelle to be on time for anything anymore.

Tony stands right behind her as she looks begrudgingly at her hair in the mirror, clearly frustrated with how uncooperative it’s being but not exactly having the time to start over like she wants to. He takes both of his hands and sets them on either of her sides, gliding them down her torso, stopping to give her butt a squeeze. “Mm. I don’t remember this dress.”

“It’s new. Nothing fits the same after Mason.” Mason’s their youngest; seven months. Michelle insists her body isn’t quite the same after his birth, but Tony doesn’t really see a difference. 

She palms her hands over his and then turns around to face him, letting out a huff.

“Tony, you’ve never been alone with all three kids before.”

“No need to point out the obvious and freak me out seconds before you’re about to leave for the night, sweetheart.”

Michelle’s eyes widen at that. “You’re freaked out? Okay, I-I’ll call the girls, I can tell them it was an emergency, that Mason’s sick or that Maddie needs —”

“Michelle. Relax. I was kidding. It’s already almost 6 o’clock, they’ll be in bed before I know it. I’m fine, I can handle my own damn children.”

“Okay. You’re right. I'm sorry. I’m just being paranoid.” She grabs her lipstick from the vanity and applies a second coat, smacking her lips together after she does and turning to face her husband. She cups his cheeks softly with both of her hands, thanks him, and tells him how much she loves him and the kids. He doesn't want her to feel guilty for going out and enjoying herself, but he can tell she does anyway.

“We love you, too. You deserve this. Go enjoy and don’t worry about me or the kids, all right?”

/////

“Hold still, or Daddy’s gonna have to tug, and we both don’t want that.”

Maddie, their four-year-old, is wiggling in her spot in between her father’s legs, distracted by her older brother who is kicking a soccer ball — that he _definitely_ isn’t allowed to kick inside of the house— around the living room with no caution. 

“I’m telling Mommy, Anthony!”, Maddie screeches, and in almost perfect harmony, the soccer ball hits an end table and knocks a picture frame holding a photo from Tony and Michelle's wedding down.

"Oops..." He scrambles to pick up the frame, and Tony knows by the sound of the glass hitting the hardwood that it's a goner.

"Anthony, _leave it_. You don't go touchin' broken glass."

"You broke it?! Daddy, he _broke_ it!"

"I know he broke it, Maddie, but you gotta stay still, a'right?"

Another _kick_ , and the ball is two inches from whacking the baby in the head.

Tony, with Maddie’s long locks still between his fingers, lifts his head up out of concentration and snaps a, “What did I say about that damn ball?! Save it for the backyard, ‘kay?”

“I’m practicing, Dad.”

“Practice _outside_. You almost took your brother's head off just now. Is your homework finished?”

Anthony rolls his eyes — it’s a new thing; your kids turn six and they go to school and they suddenly learn how to roll their eyes at you. It drives him crazy, but Michelle says he'll grow out of it. “Mom helped me with it before she left, remember?”

He doesn't remember, but he just agrees, "Yeah, fine, a'right."

Tony looks down at his poor four-year-old’s head and realizes he was a little overzealous when he described his braiding skills as “pretty solid” to his wife earlier this evening.

“Why does it _have_ to be braids, baby? Can’t we just leave it like it is? You have beautiful hair.” Tony grabs a strand of his daughter’s hair in between his fingers, holding it up to her like she doesn’t know what it looks like, like it isn’t on her own head. She really does have beautiful hair — a perfect mixture of his and his wife's.

“No, Daddy. We _have_ to do the braids. It gets the tangles,” she says simply, and Tony huffs when he realizes why it's Michelle who does this every. single. night., and why she never asks him for a hand.

He takes out his (attempt at) braids and tries to start anew, until, right on cue, his youngest child starts wailing from his bouncer in the middle of the living room floor.

“A’right, Mase, hold on, hold on. Daddy's coming.”

“Mommy does the braids better! I want _Mommy_ to do them!”

“Maddie, Mommy isn’t here to do ‘em, so it’s gonna have to be Daddy tonight, 'kay?”

“But I want _Mommy_.”

“I know you do, Mads, but Mommy’s busy.”

“Doin' _what_?”

“Doing something she hasn’t done since before you kiddos came along,” Tony tells her, freeing Maddie from in between his legs and standing up from the couch to grab his wailing baby.

A soccer ball rolls idly onto the scene, almost tripping Tony on his way to retrieve Mason.

“Anthony, what did I say? Go put the soccer ball in the backyard — _now_. Does Mom let you kick that around in the house when _I’m_ not here?”

Anthony shrugs and bluntly says, “Umm… yeah. Sometimes.” 

Tony tries to stifle a laugh, picturing the sight of his wife throwing in the towel about the whole ‘no-ball-in-the-house’ thing as she’s got a hungry, wailing baby on her hip while simultaneously dealing with a fussy four-year-old who has a more high-maintenance bedtime routine than Michelle does. _‘He breaks an end table, he breaks an end table. Whatever. I'll deal with it later.'_

“Daddy, Mase is being _louuuddd_ ,” Maddie whines. 

Oh, is he? Tony didn’t notice. He's not deafening him right now, or anything.

“He just needs milk, baby. Wanna help Daddy get him some?”

“Not really, Daddy.” Well, they raise honest children, at least.

“Well then go upstairs and change into pj's, all right? You should'a been changed an hour ago.”

“But you didn’t finish _the braaaid_.”

“That’s gonna have to wait, Madelyn. I’ve gotta get Mase some milk. Go change. How about the Ariel ones?”

“I don’t _like_ Ariel anymore.”

Of course she doesn't.

"Snow White?"

"Don't like her either."

"Fine, wear whatever you want, just..."

Tony’s phone starts vibrating in his pocket, and he grabs it on the fourth ring, holding his crying baby in his left arm. He's trying to find out where Michelle hid this damn milk and he makes a note to himself to eventually tell his wife that the counter space by the stove doesn’t double as a place to throw mail that they’ll ‘ _get to later_ ’ on. 

(Try having three kids and see if you get to the damn mail later. You don't.)

“Yeah?”

“Honey, it’s me.” She’s smiling on the other end of the phone; it’s loud and she’s probably two, three boozes in, and he’s got baby snot all over his button-down. “Is that Mason crying?”

“Y-Yeah, we’re a little behind on the night routine tonight. He’s hungry. Just getting him his milk now.”

Michelle skips the comment he anticipates about the fact that that feeding was supposed to have taken place almost an hour ago and just says, “Are you okay, Tony?”

He's almost taken aback. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“They can be a handful,” she admits, “and it’s easier when there’s two of us there. You always take care of Anthony while I handle Maddie and the baby.”

Tony bites the inside of his cheek but doesn’t respond to that comment. He takes on the oldest, the easiest, the one who knows how to brush his own teeth and (mostly) pick out his own clothes and tuck himself into bed without needing four bedtime stories and ten-thousand cuddles and kisses from Mommy. Suddenly, he feels weirdly guilty.

“S’fine, they’re fine, but look… I don’t know how to do a damn braid, Michelle.”

“I knew it! It's fine. Just leave it down for tonight, I'll deal with it in the morning."

“All right. Go, get off the phone, go have fun. How are the drinks?”, he asks with a teasing tone in his voice. His wife has one, maybe two glasses of wine every few months, mostly at a family party or a rare dinner he gets to take her out to. He’s anticipating a bad hangover tomorrow, already making a mental note to make sure they've got Tylenol and juice on hand.

“How did you know?”

“You’re a lush, baby. Have a good time. I’ll kiss ‘em goodnight for you.”

/////

A bottle and a burping and a song about farm animals later, Mason's finally stopped crying and conks out on Tony's shoulder. He sneaks him upstairs as quietly as he knows how to walk, setting him down into his crib with a kiss to the forehead. "'Night, Mase," he whispers almost inaudibly, stepping out of the room and praying to whatever Gods there are that this kid sleeps until there are two parents present.

"Hi Daddy."

He looks down at the floor and sees Maddie pressed up against his leg, hugging a book to herself. "Hey baby."

"Is Mommy gonna be back for story time?"

"Not quite, kiddo. You're stuck with me tonight." He bends down and picks Maddie up, hoists her up on his side and walks her into her room. "Lemme guess: It's a princess book."

"Mmm-hmm," his four-year-old says with confidence, sliding down his torso and onto her (princess-themed) comforter. "You have to do the voices like Mommy does, though."

Tony raises a brow at this. "What - what _voices_?"

"The _princess_ voices," Maddie says in frustration, like her dad is supposed to know how the hell to do a princess voice.

"Umm, I think we'll leave that to Mommy, 'kay?" 

"Like Mommy leaves cooking to you?"

Tony snickers at that. His wife is the best, truly — she's smarter than anyone he knows, she's the better half when it comes to just about everything involving the kids, and she's even had a significant part in saving the country a handful of times. But cooking? The woman can barely properly toast _bread_ , so they leave all of the meals (even the snacks and the coffee and the hot chocolate that the kids love so much) to Tony.

"Exactly."

Two-and-a-half rounds of that princess book later, Tony watches Maddie's eyes grow heavy and takes that as a cue to shut off her light. "The night light, Daddy," she reminds him with fluttering eyes, her voice sleepy and low. 

He gives her a smooch on the forehead and steps off of the bed to flick on her night light. "'Night, baby girl."

"'Night," she says back, and she's out. Two-for-two.

He steps out of Maddie's room, leaving the door slightly ajar because she's going through her 'scared of the dark' phase, and she likes to see the light from Mason's crib mobile shining through her room in the middle of the night in case she wakes up to go beg Mommy and Daddy to sleep in their bed like she's been doing the last few weeks.

He sighs at that. Eighty-five percent of their days, really, are just... _kids_.

Tony makes his way to room three out of three, finding Anthony awake on his bed, still not in his pajamas.

"You've been in here in your school clothes this whole time? Buddy, c'mon, go get in your pj's."

"I don't wanna go to bed until _Mom_ is home," his oldest whines, and Tony remembers now: he's going through this phase where he wants Mom, and Mom _only_. It started when she was halfway through her pregnancy with Mason, and now it's even worse. Sharing his attention with two little ones sucks for awhile, Tony knows. He's the oldest of three, too.

"Well, Mom's not comin' home until after _my_ bedtime," Tony jokes, "so you're outta luck."

"Can I call her?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I said so. She's out with her friends, Anth."

"I'll be real quick."

"Nope. Sorry, buddy."

The kid has Tony’s persistence. 

"Fine. Can she wake me up when she gets back?"

"Well that wouldn't be fair to you, would it?"

"I don't care."

"Trust me, you will when you have to wake up for school in the morning."

Anthony puffs out his cheeks and stands up from his bed, sliding off his shirt and then his jeans. He throws them on the floor by his dresser, and Tony doesn't even have the energy to tell him that that's not where dirty clothes go. He'll pick them up later.

"Anthony, I love you, you know that right?"

"I know." His six-year-old rubs his lips together as he throws on a mismatched pair of pajamas that Tony's never seen before, climbs back into his bed and throws his giant red comforter over himself. 

"And...?"

"What?"

"You still tell Mommy you love her all the time. When's the last time you told me, huh?"

"Oh. Sorry. Iloveyoutoo." He says it like one, rushed word, and Tony reminds himself not to take this little period of his son's life too seriously. He'll grow out of it. 

"Yeah, yeah." Tony reaches a hand out to ruffle his son's hair — it's _his_ hair; the kid's a spitting image of a tiny Tony, with Michelle's eyes. "Get some sleep, okay? You'll see Mom in the morning."

/////

Tony starts to make his way to their bedroom, until he remembers the toy disaster in the living room, the baby spit-up on the kitchen counter, the rubber duck fiasco from Maddie and Mason's baths... Michelle'll be too hungover to do it all, he'll be on a video conference first thing in the morning, and then it'll all just... pile up and triple by the time tomorrow night comes, and then neither of them will want to deal with it for another week.

An hour-ish of tidying up later, Tony sits down on the couch and cracks open the last beer in the fridge for himself, toeing off his socks and slipping out of his jeans. He pulls an Anthony and leaves them on the living room floor, reminding himself maybe he's the reason his kid thinks that's acceptable, but too tired to do anything about it.

He must've conked out on the couch hours ago, because the clock reads 2:07 AM when Tony hears Michelle fidgeting with her keys in the door, giggling two octaves higher than she normally does. The headlight from the cab hurts his eyes as it pulls out of the driveway, but he's up now, so.

He stands up, trying to shake the sleep out of his body, and tiptoes to the door to open it up for her so she can stop flinging her keys around all noisily like that — no one needs to wake three sleeping kids at 2:07 AM. 

"H-Hey, sweetheart." His voice is raspy and tired.

"Hey." Her tongue's between her teeth, her hair's up in a high bun, just a few loose strands framing her face, and he smells sweet alcohol on her breath when she kisses him hello. Well, at least she had a good time. That's what he wanted. 

"I didn't expect you up. Tell me they _just_ went to bed," she jokes, stepping inside next to him, her palm sliding up and down his forearm. "Wait, did they?"

"Yeah, actually, just a few minutes ago."

"What?!" 

"Michelle, I'm joking. They've been in bed for hours," he assures her. "Anthony gave me a little bit of a hard time, but we managed."

"Ugh. I'm sorry, honey. He's been so clingy to me since Mason was born. He'll —"

"Grow out of it," Tony says at the same time as her, and she laughs. "I know. It's okay. Did you have a good time?"

"The _best_ ," she says, the euphoria from all of the alcohol still there, he notices. She leans forward and peppers a bunch of kisses onto his cheeks, stopping only to wince at the stubble growing there. "Ugh. You didn't shave."

"Oh, shit, I must've forgot to with all of the free time I had tonight."

"Tony."

"Look, they're alive, they're bathed, clothed, fed... Anthony broke one of our wedding pictures, but whatever. I managed."

Her brows furrow in disappointment, but Tony’ll replace the frame tomorrow. “He did? How?"

"That damn soccer ball. He's gotta stop kickin' that thing around in the house. You know he almost broke Mase's face?"

Drunk Michelle takes that a lot less seriously than Normal, Mom Michelle would. "I'll talk to him about that."

"Good. And Maddie’s story, I - I didn't do that princess voice, I just couldn't."

"It's okay. She just likes to be read to. I'm not that good at the voices either."

"Michelle, I'm _exhausted_. Let's go to bed. C'mon."

"S-So now wouldn't be a good time to ask you for another one?"

"What? Another _kid_?" Number Three was hardly planned, but she just nods and says, 'Uh-huh'. He cocks a brow at her and calls her insane. "Maybe with your next husba—"

She slaps him on the arm teasingly. "I'm _kidding_. Tony, I'm kidding. I was just trying to make sure we were on the same page."

"Oh, we're on the same page. I love 'em, I love them all _so_ much, but we're definitely done making babies."

/////


End file.
